ICONE TOWER The Light of Manila

ICONE TOWER The Light of Manila

19Aug

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This a new upcoming project in Bonifacio Global City beside UPTOWN MALL by BCDA and Henning Larsen HongKong. This would give the neighborhood community in Uptown Bonifacio a sense of prime location to WORK-LIVE PLAY & SHOP. This will serve as a new benchmark to the skyscrapers in Metro Manila and would revolutionize the way we picture the skies.

Below are all the words of the Partner and Design Director of The ICONE Tower and I also added the Video below which I used as a reference.

Claude Bojer Godefroy (Partner and Design Director) – Bonifacio Global City will soon work on a very special building it will transform its image and become a new focal point of Manila. I think its a good idea to add more character in the business district that have few distinctive buildings, I think its a good idea to make a statement about building in Manila today, a statement about being generous with public space, about giving back to the city and of course to its people, a statement about filipino architecture is about, but first we have to understand what makes the ICONE successful.

What is an Icon? – An icon needs to capture popular imagination and it needs to be instantly recognizable, it needs to be a symbol of the nation it represents and finally it needs to be eternal. Therefor designing an icon is not just about creating a beautiful form, it is the meaning of the form, the use of the form, and how this form can be timeless. For me the right form depends on we response to the context, the site, local culture, climate and the people.

THE SITE – Sydney Opera or Bilbao Museum are amazing icons because of the spectacular surroundings that let them breath and shine. In Paris the Pyramid of the Louvre and the Great Arch were design specifically before their sides, to resolve their size perfectly and they can only fit there.

Our site is in the heart of Manila’s most vibrant center. We have a unique opportunity to give it a world class skyscraper and a world class space at its foot . The difficulty is the challenge to exist in such a dense site, with other tall buildings so close to us, how can we stand out here? I believe it is crucial to be taller that the neighbors are. Our skyscraper needs to reach up to find some space to shine, it needs to be a significant part of the skyline Bonifacio Global City and of Manila.

To achieve the hight we position our public program at the base and at the top of the tower, where offices would not be efficient or offer enough daylight. By slanting the facade to merge the program into one form, we get a stiff pyramid. In the master plan as well we need to differentiate our selves from the surroundings, therefor we propose a pedestrian level, the ellipse freeze up the ground floor and binds together the entire neighborhood, the ellipse ensures the urban ventilation which helps to cool and cleans out the air. It also insures minimal obstruction of the views and daylight from the surrounding residential buildings, keeping neighbors happy. The elliptic plan combine with the pyramid creates an elliptic cone, we call it the ICONE tower.

Local Culture – The ICONE Tower stands out in its context and it is efficient and logical, but it also has to relate to the filipino culture. I think one way to relate to people is by connecting and by continuing existing parts of their culture. We encountered the cone well before the site demanded it from us in filipino nature. An existing icon of the Philippines is the perfect cone of Mount Mayon, a majestic volcano rising in the outskirts of Manila, a pure and a strong form reaching for the sky. We want to reproduce this qualities in ICONE Tower. Another major existing icon in the Philippines is the “Bahay Kubo” the archetype of philippine architecture. The famous filipino architect Bobby Mañosa showed in his work that we can the wisdom found in traditions to contemporary designs.

The Bahay Kubo is a pyramidal form divided into three layers. The ICONE Tower adapts this idea to another scale. We have reinterpreted the silong for the base of the ICONE Tower to offer a grand covered public space, it is a generous gift to the local community and to the users of the tower, it will act as a new city center, a meeting point for people in the northern part of Bonifacio Global City. For the Middle Part, ICONE Tower should become an exemplary workspace, with comfortable daylight, generous social spaces, access to green terraces and atriums for larger tenants. As for the top in our project we make it accessible to the public as well. As an observatory located in a unique spectacular and spiritual space compared to cathedrals. Manila needs a vantage point that is truly accessible to public to layman. The mini sky lounges and restaurants are already located in the top of the 5-star hotels in Manila are not destined for the broad public, ICONE Tower will offer this space to citizens and to the tourists. Emerging above the skyline of Bonifacio Global City is a cone inspire that is distinct in form and materiality form all other buildings of manila. At day it will shine by its own transparency, at night a large lense will project a beacon of light over Manila and its bay, it will act as a light house for Manila giving a sense of orientation and security in the sproutling city. It will remind everyone that a vast ocean re-surrounds the islands of the Philippines perhaps the most defining part of filipino identity.We call the top of the tower The Light of Manila, besides being an observatory with spectacular views, the light of manila is a grand space meant to inspire and bring filipinos together, I hope it can gather filipinos of all religions in a shared peaceful spiritual emotion, an emotion created by space designed to elevate the mind and celebrate the light it self.The ICONE Plaza around the tower is yet another generous gift to the city and once more it relates to something that I think that lies deep in the filipino soul, the forrest. We propose it to be a dense canopy of tall large trees recreating beneath of the shade and the ambiance of a filipino tropical forest, the dense canopy of trees also filters the views to the surrounding buildings.We do not forget the public culture or the need to be useful for people on the daily basis. Filipinos has a function for gatherings, for celebration, and they traditionally enjoy doing those on public space. The ICONE Plaza is meant to offer protected and useful space for these popular activities, some pavilions were cater for food and drinks animating the plaza 24/7 and creating life at the heart of the city.

Local Climate – Our project aims to provide an archtectual respond to the climate as bahay kubo did but also the arcades introduced by spanish, it is all about creating shade and shelter around the building and the facade needs protection too.

A perfect structure – The Philippines are prone to earthquakes and typhoons. The cone is the optimum form to reduce the structural cost to resist those forces. The ICONE Tower is designed to be a perfect structure, the floor span between the stepping core and an exoskeleton.

The exoskeleton becomes the most expressive part of the design. it is an almost gothic structure with arches distributing the loads. It has a very vertical expression that intensifies the celestial effect of the skyscraper just as in cathedrals.

Then there a questions of the durability of the design. The pipelines of tall buildings in Manila is full of eye catching designs, however two icons have to be both eye catching and timeless. The integration to the site, the cultural relevance, and the purity of the form of ICONE Tower is likely to make it last as an internal achievement in Manila.